I Pretended to Be a Makeup Artist Backstage at London Fashion Week and Lived to Tell the Tale

Not every beauty editor is a hair and makeup whiz. I have a few colleagues who still couldn’t execute a smoky eye or curl their own hair if their life depended on it. But me, I’ve always prided myself on my skills. I’m the “makeup artist” among my friends (which means I’ve never once been on time for a wedding reception). I can French-braid like a pro. And when I was a ballet dancer, I always received compliments on my stage-makeup prowess. So when Nars challenged me to play makeup artist backstage at a major fashion show in London, I accepted immediately and confidently. You've got this, I told myself. This will be a cinch, I thought. I’ve been covering backstage at the shows for six years, so, you know, osmosis must have kicked in at some point.

But reality soon set in, especially as the day came closer and the details were confirmed. I was to join makeup artist Mark Carrasquillo’s makeup team backstage at J. W. Anderson—one of the most respected makeup artists in the business at the show of one of my favorite designers. I would have to show a professional my amateur work. I would have to not turn an 18-year-old model into a Las Vegas showgirl. I would have to put my face thisclose to a stranger’s face, a stranger who has her makeup done every day, for a living.

I spent countless nights tossing and turning, agonizing over how to naturally fill in brows, what brushes to use when, and most of all, how the heck I would figure out what foundation and concealer to use. I have problems matching my own skin tone, let alone another person’s. Backstage at Marc Jacobs, I begged my makeup artist friend Rommy Najor to tell me his secrets. “Always match it to the collarbone,” he said. But how do I even know what bottle to grab? “You just kind of know by looking,” he shrugged. Needless to say, I didn’t walk away from our conversation any more confident that I would be able to pull this off.

A bird's-eye view of backstage.

Suzanne Middlemass/Allure

Lucky for me (and my insomnia), the end of New York Fashion Week was so hectic I barely had time to go to the bathroom, let alone think. So it wasn’t until I walked into my hotel in London, with my shiny new Nars palettes waiting for me in my room, that my nerves really kicked in—gut-wrenching, appetite-erasing, chug-two-glasses-of-red-wine-at-dinner nerves. And the morning of the show was no better. I tried on three different all-black outfits (Nars makeup artists are required to wear black backstage). I brushed my teeth better than if I was going to the dentist (sorry, Dr. Rosen). I packed my bag, ran out the door, and spent the entire cab ride trying not to imagine worst-case scenarios of spilling loose powder everywhere or pinching a model’s eyelid with a lash curler.

The Nars Soft Matte Concealers, out in January.

Suzanne Middlemass/Allure

I wasn’t entirely left to my own devices backstage (thank God). Nars teamed me up with one of its lead stylists, Jane Richardson, who would make sure I didn’t totally screw things up or bring harm to myself and others. I was relieved until the brief, which is where the lead makeup artist demonstrates and explains how to create the look. I immediately had flashbacks of my college art-history lectures. Surrounded by his team, Mark worked quickly and spoke even quicker, and you had to take notes (mental notes in this case) about what he said, what he did, and what kind of tools he was using. Seconds into the demonstration my stomach lurched. The look was extremely light, natural-looking makeup with an emphasis on skin and brows. “This is sensitive makeup,” Mark laughed. I cringed. One thing I’ve learned from my years backstage interviewing pros like Mark, Pat McGrath, Diane Kendal, and Tom Pecheux is that the more natural the makeup, the harder it is to get right. And they’ve been doing this for years.

Advertisement

Suzanne Middlemass/Allure

Within minutes of the brief a model was in our chair, which immediately became my chair as Jane handed me two cotton pads doused in Nars Multi-Action Hydrating Toner and backed away. I was told to prep the skin: Go over the face with the toner, treat any raw, red spots with Homeoplasmine, and give the model a face massage with the brand’s Aqua Gel Luminous Oil-Free Moisturizer, the latter of which I failed miserably at. I was too timid and too gentle (and probably a bit awkward, too). It turns out this is one instance where you don’t have to worry about being too rough. “The harder you do it the better,” my first model, Phillipa Hemphrey, told me nicely. And here I was trying to not make her cry. But besides brushing up on my face-massaging skills, this is where I learned just how important the skin-prep process is for a makeup artist. Not only does it hydrate the skin (which makes their lives easier), but it also helps you figure out a) what kind of makeup to use and b) where to put it, Jane explained. “It lets you feel how the skin is reacting to the moisturizer, which tells you what kind of foundation to use—matte if it soaks it in right away, luminous if not. And as you massage the skin, the cheeks will naturally start to flush, letting you know where best to put the blush.”

Suzanne Middlemass/Allure

And that wasn’t all I learned. I learned the best way to apply concealer so that it looks practically invisible (using a fluffy shadow brush, like Nars #42 Blending Eyeshadow Brush). I learned how to get rid of too much concealer (your finger pressed repeatedly over the area to melt it away). I learned how to ignore photographers whose lenses are shoved into your face. And I learned the Herculean task of applying brown mascara to the brows without getting any pigment on the skin, a process that proved challenging with my second model, Kirin Dejonckheere, who had the lightest blonde eyebrows I’ve ever seen. Terrified I’d make her look like a Belgian Groucho Marx, I used the lightest hand possible, delicately painting the brown mascara onto the hairs and blending it with a clean spooley brush. And while Mark ended up darkening them slightly when I brought her over to be checked, I’m glad I proceeded with caution. “It’s always better to not do enough, because it’s always easier to add more,” said Jane. “It’s worse if you take them to Mark and he has to take things off—and the same logic applies in real life.”

Mark Carrasquillo checking one of my models.

Suzanne Middlemass/Allure

I got to do all the things I’ve written about but never actually tried myself, like apply lipstick with my fingers and use lipstick as blush, which you do by running the bristles of a small foundation brush over the lipstick bullet, swiping it onto the skin, and then diffusing with a medium-size fluffy brush (like my personal fave,

, which I used on both girls). And making the skin as perfect as possible with the tiniest amount of product, which even as a seasoned beauty editor I doubted you could actually do. And I did it all without making a total ass of myself. Both my models got the OK from Mark, with only minimal tweaks. The only time I nearly had a heart attack was when, busy with his own model, Mark sent Phillipa and me away without checking her. “I need a minute, I’ll look at her later,” he said, as she got whisked away into hair and I stood there dumbfounded, hoping they wouldn’t have to totally redo her minutes before she stepped onto the runway.

Advertisement

Model Phillipa Hemphrey

Suzanne Middlemass/Allure

The biggest lesson I learned from this experience, however, has nothing to do with application tricks (although that concealer/blending brush tip is going to change my life, I know it). It’s how intimate the experience of doing someone else’s makeup can be. I’ve had my makeup done 1,000 times, but it’s completely different being on the other side of the interaction. There is something extremely visceral and personal about being so close to someone and basically playing with their face. I have to admit it made me uncomfortable at first—I’ve lived in New York City for 13 years, and I don’t touch people I don’t know—but by the end I was surprised to find it made me happy. It sounds hokey, but you end up feeling a close connection with the person in the makeup chair—even if you’ve only exchanged a few pleasantries—and you experience what I can best describe as an exchange of energies (again, hokey, I know, but that’s what I felt). And in an environment and industry that often feels quite impersonal and slightly superficial, it’s nice to experience something so personal and real amongst the chaos—especially if you've managed to pick the right concealer color on top of all of that.

Model Kirin Dejonckheere.

Suzanne Middlemass/Allure

Watch model Carmen Carrera share some of her favorite beauty products of all time: